Sleep apnea is a condition in which a person stops breathing for a short time while sleeping. Sleep apnea has multiple classifications based on the source of dysfunction. Obstructive sleep apnea results from mechanical blockage of the airway, for example, due to the weight of fatty neck tissue compressing the trachea. Central sleep apnea results from neurological dysfunction. Mixed sleep apnea has a combination of mechanical and neurological cause.
Symptoms of sleep apnea include snoring, breath holding during sleep, rapid awakening with gasping for air, morning headaches, depression, irritability, loss of memory, lack of energy, high risk of automobile and workplace accidents, and lack of high quality sleep and resulting daytime grogginess and sleepiness. Sleep apnea is rarely fatal but is linked to high blood pressure and increased probability of heart disease, stroke, and arrhythmias. Patients with coronary artery disease who have a blood oxygen level lowered by sleep-disordered breathing may be at risk of ventricular arrhythmia and nocturnal sudden death. Furthermore, sleep-disordered breathing may cause coronary artery disease and hypertension.
Various treatments exist for sleep apnea including medical device treatments, surgery, and drugs. The type of treatment depends on the type of sleep apnea. For patients who also experience heart failure or other cardiac conditions, another form of treatment that has been proposed for treating sleep apnea is pacing therapy administered by an implantable cardiac device, such as an implantable pacemaker. For this latter form of treatment, however, there remains a need to further improve the operation of implantable cardiac devices to better analyze sleep apnea and determine which types of response therapies offer more effective results.